Monday, July 26, 2010

Some 500 to 2,000 British schoolgirls will be genitally mutilated over the summer holidays. Some will be taken abroad, others will be "cut" or circumcised and sewn closed here in the UK by women already living here or who are flown in and brought to "cutting parties" for a few girls at a time in a cost-saving exercise.

Then the girls will return to their schools and try to get on with their lives, scarred mentally and physically by female genital mutilation (FGM), a practice that serves as a social and cultural bonding exercise and, among those who are stitched up, to ensure that chastity can be proved to a future husband.

This is why sensible people will reach for a vomit bag (perhaps a revolver) when someone suggests the idea of honoring diversity. Maybe yes, and then again: which diversity? Not every diversity is a good one worth honoring; some forms of diversity need to be expunged from human society yesterday. I will not honor the diversity of cutting children to pieces because an idiot years later will check for scars, physical and emotional, to prove a woman's "chastity."

Don't dare listen to me, though -- I have a bad attitude, and a terrible habit of finding the flaw in every diamond shard on every unsanitized surgical bit. Barbara Ehrenreich explains:

2 comments:

Anonymous
said...

Apparently, here's one more thing god forgot to do when he created women to protect them from men: Cut away and sew up their genitalia. It's a good thing we have those wise religious people tying up all the loose ends left by god.

The RSA animations are brilliant. I hadn't seen them before. Now I understand why my cousin became a quadriplegic after a surfing "accident" he had 23 years ago. If he really wanted to, he could "attract" healing so he'd be back on his board tomorrow morning.

who?

I try to be awake, and if I can manage that, to be reasonable. "With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him." My e-mail is dances with anxiety [at] gmail dot com.